Online Safety Act consultation on livestreaming, content scanning and takedowns

The Online Safety Act is threatening our privacy and freedom of expression. People in the UK are being forced to use age verification and online content is being restricted.

Now Ofcom, the government's regulatory and competition authority for the Internet, is having yet another consultation on further proposals under the Online Safety Act. These would lead to even more age verification and further censorship of what we can see online.

Tell them what you think about these new proposals!

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Consultation Response to Ofcom on Additional Safety Measures under the Online Safety Act

I am writing as a concerned member of the public to respond to parts of your consultation on additional safety measures under the Online Safety Act. While I support the goal of making online spaces safer, I am concerned that several of Ofcom’s proposals risk undermining fundamental rights protected under UK law and international frameworks — in particular, freedom of expression (Article 10 ECHR), privacy (Article 8 ECHR), and children’s rights (UNCRC).

Any restrictions must be lawful, necessary, and proportionate. I urge Ofcom to ensure that its guidance strikes the right balance between safety and the preservation of democratic freedoms. I am happy for you to publish my consultation response with my address and phone number removed.

Question 3 (Livestreaming)
I do not agree with the proposals as they stand. Restricting all under-18s in the UK from receiving comments, reactions, or gifts while livestreaming would disproportionately interfere with teenagers’ rights to freedom of expression (Article 10 ECHR; Article 13 UNCRC).
This measure also risks undermining the UK’s creative industries pipeline. A report by Oxford Economics highlighted that YouTube content creators contributed £2.2bn to the UK economy (Oxford Economics, 2023). Many creators begin developing their skills and audiences before turning 18, including in areas such as music and e-sports. A blanket restriction would deny older teenagers the opportunity to build careers in fields the government itself has recognised as strategically important.

Research also shows livestreaming can play a positive emotional and social role for young people, fulfilling psychological needs for community and identity (Tang, Y., Zhang, X. & Zan, S. Scientific Reports, 2024). These benefits should be weighed in assessing proportionality.
Instead of a blanket ban, measures should be risk-based. Offering stronger protections for younger children while enabling older teenagers to participate safely. Without this, there is also a real risk that young people will bypass restrictions altogether, leaving them less safe rather than more protected.

Finally, I do not think these features need to be incorporated into highly effective age assurance. The privacy and security risks involved in age assurance are even less justified than restricting an activity that is perfectly lawful for under-18s to participate in.

Question 12 (Proactive Technology Draft Guidance)
I am very concerned about proposals that require the proactive scanning of communications. Even if the technology worked reliably, it would amount to generalised monitoring, which is prohibited under UK GDPR and would intrude on lawful and ordinary conversations.

False positives are inevitable. Young people already use euphemisms like “unalived” (for suicide) or “grape” (for rape) to avoid moderation errors. Such chilling effects discourage people from seeking help and undermine trust. Disproportionate use of proactive tools could also have particular impact on vulnerable groups, including minorities, LGBTQ+ communities, and political activists,  whose speech is more likely to be misinterpreted.

To avoid censorship by default, Ofcom’s guidance should require:

Clear limits on the scope of proactive technologies;
Transparency on error rates;
Independent audits of systems;
Explicit standards for acceptable false positive rates;
Fast redress and restoration of wrongly censored content.
Any measures that restrict lawful speech must be clearly prohibited by law. Vague principles-based guidance might fail to meet the threshold required by law. As such, Ofcom must set clear standards that assess the proportionality of any measure.

Question 50 (Definition of a Crisis)
What counts as a “crisis” must be narrowly and tightly defined. Without clear legal limits, “crisis” could be applied to ordinary protest or dissent, leading to illegitimate takedowns of democratic speech.

A crisis should be defined only as an immediate and exceptional threat to life or public safety. Any requests from law enforcement to platforms must be subject to judicial authorisation, documented due process, and democratic oversight.

Question 51 (Small Services in a Crisis)
The proposed measures are not realistic for smaller services. Many small or community platforms, which often serve marginalised groups, do not have the resources to implement the same systems as large commercial providers.

Forcing them to comply at the same level risks driving them offline or deterring new entrants, entrenching the dominance of the largest platforms and stifling innovation. Ofcom should adopt a proportionality-based or tiered compliance model to ensure obligations are achievable and that alternative online spaces are not suppressed.

Question 52 (Best Practice in Responding to a Crisis)
International experience shows that livestreaming and social media are essential tools for crisis accountability. For example, livestreams from the Hong Kong protests in 2019, and from Black Lives Matter protests in the US, provided real-time documentation that challenged official narratives and informed global public debate.

Under Ofcom’s current proposals, such content could easily be suppressed at the very moment it is most needed. If livestreams documenting protests, police actions, or other high-stakes events are removed or restricted, the result could be not only a less informed public but also greater mistrust, fuelling disinformation and unrest.
Best practice must therefore include safeguards requiring platforms to preserve livestreams that may constitute evidence of human rights abuses, even during crises.

Safety and freedom are not opposing goals: both are essential in a democratic society. Ofcom’s proposals must be carefully revised to avoid undermining fundamental rights while still addressing genuine harms.

Without stronger safeguards for free expression, privacy, and equality, the current measures risk doing more harm than good.

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The Online Safety Act

The Online Safety Act (OSA) has given Ofcom powers over what we say, see and do online. Services have to comply with a large set of complicated rules and regulations. They risk heavy fines and even imprisonment if they don't comply. Under the Act there is a duty for services to 'have regard to' freedom of expression issues. But this is too weak. The Act is now restricting lawful speech and blocking vital information. We need a law that protects our human rights, not undermines them.

Another consultation

Ofcom has launched another long (309 pages and 17 annexes!) and complicated consultation on “Additional Safety Measures” . Most people won't have time to read it, but the proposals will affect what we see and do online.

The goals are laudable: keeping children and vulnerable users safer online. But we are concerned about the impact on young people's online expression and the wider censorship of social media posts.

The proposals include:

- Age-gating livestreaming for everyone. Anyone who doesn't pass an 18+ age-check will not be allowed any chat, reaction, recording or gifts to their livestream. So adult streamers will be forced to use age assurance with all of its privacy risks. Meanwhile, young streamers will see their online expression and creativity restricted.

- Proactive AI scanning of our social media posts to remove illegal content. This could results in content being wrongly censored, and has a high risk of impacting speech of democratic importance. For example reporting on a protest about the proscription of Palestine Action could be censored as 'terrorist' content.

- New powers for law enforcement to make requests for platforms to censor content in times of crisis.

ORG has created a tool to help you submit your views and encourage democratic participation in Ofcom's consultation. There is a suggested template response but you can amend this to express your concerns in your own words. Please be respectful in your use of language when using this tool.

You can also reply directly to Ofcom using their own form.

Please note that unless you indicate otherwise, Ofcom might publish responses to their consultation on their webpage.

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